M Mcgovern
Biographic Data
| ID | 54278 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Mcgovern |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgovern |
| SIGNATURE | MCGOVERN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5379-1203 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
I Did Not Wash My Hand for Days: The Stuplime Return of Revolutionary Speech in the Republic of Guinea
This article focuses on the reception of revolutionary oratory in what was once known as The People's Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. Sékou Touré, Guinea's first president, captivated the nation with fiery, unscripted speeches lasting four, five, or six hours. Guinean audiences were enthralled by his sublime revolutionary rhetoric. In a 2008 coup, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara declared himself president, attempting to recreate the fervour of Guin…
China–Africa Encounters: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities
This review uses multilingual sources to illuminate China–Africa encounters in historical, socialist, and postsocialist contexts. It emphasizes interregional connections over time and uses nuanced ethnographic accounts to complement macrogeopolitical analyses. The article focuses on mutual stereotypes as well as on the negotiation of social and cultural barriers in everyday life. It challenges static, bounded conceptual categories in social scien…
A Socialist Peace: Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country
Book Conversation with Mike McGovern
Chasing Shadows in the Dunes: Islamist Practice and Counterterrorist Policy in West Africa’s Sahara–Sahel Zone
This chapter lays out the most salient variables in the complex equation, including the significance of changing religious practice, of illicit economic activity, and of local micropolitical realities. While figures like General Wald claimed that the Sahelian terrorist threat was imminent, others have been equally adamant that there have been no jihadi attacks in the SaharaSahel zone. Benjamin Soares has argued that such anxieties reveal much mor…
Liberty and moral ambivalence: Postsocialist transitions, refugee hosting, and bodily comportment in the Republic of Guinea
Guinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma-speaking farmers' categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites' and contemporary anthropologists' understandin…
History is stubborn: Talk about Truth, Justice, and National Reconciliation in the Republic of Guinea
This article uses an analysis of discussions of the November 1970 Portuguese attack on Guinea as a window into issues that continue to be raised concerning the country's first post-independence regime (1958-1984). We analyze ongoing debates among Guineans regarding the legacy of the former president, Sékou Touré, and whether or not there is a need for truth-telling and/or justice for abuses committed under his rule. One strand of this discussion …
Unmasking the State: Making Guinea Modern
When the Republic of Guinea gained independence in 1958, one of the first policies of the new state was a village-to-village eradication of masks and other ritual objects it deemed fetishes. The Demystification Program, as it was called, was so urgent it even preceded the building of a national road system. In Unmasking the State, Mike McGovern attempts to understand why this program was so important to the emerging state and examines the complex…
Turning the Clock Back or Breaking With the Past?: Charismatic Temporality and Elite Politics in Côte d'Ivoire and the United States
The article explores the forms of punctuated time that characterize evangelical discourse in both Côte d'Ivoire and the United States. It compares forms of punctuated time that not only form the basis of End Times theology in both places, but also have served as the basis of important lobbying networks. Although evangelical politics in each place has different roots, both are linked by populist anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Most impor…
Life during wartime: Aspirational Kinship and the Management of Insecurity
This article explores the ways that the institution of the avunculate has been used as an idiom for negotiating forced displacement, dispossession, and insecurity in the forested region where modern-day Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire converge. The essay analyses the ways that the rights and responsibilities that inhere in the MB-ZS relationship are both invoked 'aspirationally' by those with no prior link of kinship and parried …
Making War in Côte d'Ivoire
Harry West, Kupilikula: O Poder e o Invisível em Mueda, Moçambique
Few books on “apparently irrational beliefs” such as witchcraft achieve the analytical subtlety of Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Equally few achieve the organizational elegance of Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer. Amazingly, Harry West’s Kupilikula compares favourably to Evans-Pritchard’s two most famous books on both scores. The book consists of an extended analysis of uwavi, or witchcraft, as an idiom for understan…
Popular Development Economics—An Anthropologist among the Mandarins
In 1997, I found myself newly arrived at Oxford University. I was taking a detour from my path to do research in West Africa thanks to a fellowship that funded a year of ancillary training before my fieldwork. Though studying anthropology, I was at St. Antony's College, where Paul Collier's Center for the Study of African Economies is located, and was in the same entering cohort as Collier's now-famous student Dambisa Moyo (assuming I would not b…
Writing About Conflict in Africa: Stakes and Strategies
Writing about conflict in Africa is a tricky thing. Publications from non-governmental organizations and human rights campaigners often read as if they were calibrated to maximize public distress, and thus the political or financial support that would keep human rights institutions in business. Many journalistic accounts are stitched together from the rhetorical and analytical remnants of a colonial and sometimes racist common sense. Against this…
Building States to Build Peace
How can legitimate and sustainable states best be established in the aftermath of civil wars? And what role should international actors play in supporting the vital process? Addressing these questions, the authors of Building States to Peace explore the core challenges involved in institutionalizing postconflict states. The combination of thematic chapters and in-depth case studies covers the full range of the most vexing and diverse problems con…
Janvier 2007 - Sékou Touré est mort
Cet article décrit la montée des protestations populaires contre le régime du président Conté, encadrée par deux fédérations syndicales. L'analyse de la « structure de conjoncture » des grèves et des manifestations exige de comprendre comment le mécontentement déjà ancien des Guinéens a pu aboutir début 2007 à de tels mouvements de masse. Le véritable succès de cette mobilisation réside peut-être moins dans ses tentatives d'arracher des concessio…
Rebuilding a failed state: Liberia
This article argues for a combination of long-term engagement in providing security, culminating in training and mentoring of new security forces; a comprehensive approach to reintegrating ex-combatants that also benefits civilian host communities and helps to ensure that agricultural livelihoods are made viable; and the opening of a space for discussion of governance issues and revenue distribution that is supported by a revenue-collection trust…
Conflit régional et rhétorique de la contre-insurrection: Guinéens et réfugiés en septembre 2000
Le discours du président Conté le 9 septembre 2000 et les violences contre les réfugiés qui s'ensuivirent renvoient à plusieurs rationalités au-delà des attaques menées alors à partir du Liberia voisin. Si certaines relèvent des guerres dans les États voisins et des alliances militaires du gouvernement guinéen, il faut aussi prendre la mesure de l'histoire, notamment de l'ancrage, par la rhétorique politique, de schèmes coercitifs dans la culture…
History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology (review)
"More on Lamp's "First Word
Life during wartime: Aspirational Kinship and the Management of Insecurity
This article explores the ways that the institution of the avunculate has been used as an idiom for negotiating forced displacement, dispossession, and insecurity in the forested region where modern-day Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire converge. The essay analyses the ways that the rights and responsibilities that inhere in the MB-ZS relationship are both invoked 'aspirationally' by those with no prior link of kinship and parried …
Liberty and moral ambivalence: Postsocialist transitions, refugee hosting, and bodily comportment in the Republic of Guinea
Guinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma-speaking farmers' categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites' and contemporary anthropologists' understandin…
Turning the Clock Back or Breaking With the Past?: Charismatic Temporality and Elite Politics in Côte d'Ivoire and the United States
The article explores the forms of punctuated time that characterize evangelical discourse in both Côte d'Ivoire and the United States. It compares forms of punctuated time that not only form the basis of End Times theology in both places, but also have served as the basis of important lobbying networks. Although evangelical politics in each place has different roots, both are linked by populist anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Most impor…
Conflit régional et rhétorique de la contre-insurrection: Guinéens et réfugiés en septembre 2000
Le discours du président Conté le 9 septembre 2000 et les violences contre les réfugiés qui s'ensuivirent renvoient à plusieurs rationalités au-delà des attaques menées alors à partir du Liberia voisin. Si certaines relèvent des guerres dans les États voisins et des alliances militaires du gouvernement guinéen, il faut aussi prendre la mesure de l'histoire, notamment de l'ancrage, par la rhétorique politique, de schèmes coercitifs dans la culture…
History is stubborn: Talk about Truth, Justice, and National Reconciliation in the Republic of Guinea
This article uses an analysis of discussions of the November 1970 Portuguese attack on Guinea as a window into issues that continue to be raised concerning the country's first post-independence regime (1958-1984). We analyze ongoing debates among Guineans regarding the legacy of the former president, Sékou Touré, and whether or not there is a need for truth-telling and/or justice for abuses committed under his rule. One strand of this discussion …
Popular Development Economics—An Anthropologist among the Mandarins
In 1997, I found myself newly arrived at Oxford University. I was taking a detour from my path to do research in West Africa thanks to a fellowship that funded a year of ancillary training before my fieldwork. Though studying anthropology, I was at St. Antony's College, where Paul Collier's Center for the Study of African Economies is located, and was in the same entering cohort as Collier's now-famous student Dambisa Moyo (assuming I would not b…
Janvier 2007 - Sékou Touré est mort
Cet article décrit la montée des protestations populaires contre le régime du président Conté, encadrée par deux fédérations syndicales. L'analyse de la « structure de conjoncture » des grèves et des manifestations exige de comprendre comment le mécontentement déjà ancien des Guinéens a pu aboutir début 2007 à de tels mouvements de masse. Le véritable succès de cette mobilisation réside peut-être moins dans ses tentatives d'arracher des concessio…
I Did Not Wash My Hand for Days: The Stuplime Return of Revolutionary Speech in the Republic of Guinea
This article focuses on the reception of revolutionary oratory in what was once known as The People's Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. Sékou Touré, Guinea's first president, captivated the nation with fiery, unscripted speeches lasting four, five, or six hours. Guinean audiences were enthralled by his sublime revolutionary rhetoric. In a 2008 coup, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara declared himself president, attempting to recreate the fervour of Guin…
Writing About Conflict in Africa: Stakes and Strategies
Writing about conflict in Africa is a tricky thing. Publications from non-governmental organizations and human rights campaigners often read as if they were calibrated to maximize public distress, and thus the political or financial support that would keep human rights institutions in business. Many journalistic accounts are stitched together from the rhetorical and analytical remnants of a colonial and sometimes racist common sense. Against this…
Rebuilding a failed state: Liberia
This article argues for a combination of long-term engagement in providing security, culminating in training and mentoring of new security forces; a comprehensive approach to reintegrating ex-combatants that also benefits civilian host communities and helps to ensure that agricultural livelihoods are made viable; and the opening of a space for discussion of governance issues and revenue distribution that is supported by a revenue-collection trust…
"More on Lamp's "First Word
History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology (review)
Conflit régional et rhétorique de la contre-insurrection: Guinéens et réfugiés en septembre 2000
Le discours du président Conté le 9 septembre 2000 et les violences contre les réfugiés qui s'ensuivirent renvoient à plusieurs rationalités au-delà des attaques menées alors à partir du Liberia voisin. Si certaines relèvent des guerres dans les États voisins et des alliances militaires du gouvernement guinéen, il faut aussi prendre la mesure de l'histoire, notamment de l'ancrage, par la rhétorique politique, de schèmes coercitifs dans la culture…
Rebuilding a failed state: Liberia
This article argues for a combination of long-term engagement in providing security, culminating in training and mentoring of new security forces; a comprehensive approach to reintegrating ex-combatants that also benefits civilian host communities and helps to ensure that agricultural livelihoods are made viable; and the opening of a space for discussion of governance issues and revenue distribution that is supported by a revenue-collection trust…
Janvier 2007 - Sékou Touré est mort
Cet article décrit la montée des protestations populaires contre le régime du président Conté, encadrée par deux fédérations syndicales. L'analyse de la « structure de conjoncture » des grèves et des manifestations exige de comprendre comment le mécontentement déjà ancien des Guinéens a pu aboutir début 2007 à de tels mouvements de masse. Le véritable succès de cette mobilisation réside peut-être moins dans ses tentatives d'arracher des concessio…
Building States to Build Peace
How can legitimate and sustainable states best be established in the aftermath of civil wars? And what role should international actors play in supporting the vital process? Addressing these questions, the authors of Building States to Peace explore the core challenges involved in institutionalizing postconflict states. The combination of thematic chapters and in-depth case studies covers the full range of the most vexing and diverse problems con…
Making War in Côte d'Ivoire
Harry West, Kupilikula: O Poder e o Invisível em Mueda, Moçambique
Few books on “apparently irrational beliefs” such as witchcraft achieve the analytical subtlety of Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Equally few achieve the organizational elegance of Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer. Amazingly, Harry West’s Kupilikula compares favourably to Evans-Pritchard’s two most famous books on both scores. The book consists of an extended analysis of uwavi, or witchcraft, as an idiom for understan…
Popular Development Economics—An Anthropologist among the Mandarins
In 1997, I found myself newly arrived at Oxford University. I was taking a detour from my path to do research in West Africa thanks to a fellowship that funded a year of ancillary training before my fieldwork. Though studying anthropology, I was at St. Antony's College, where Paul Collier's Center for the Study of African Economies is located, and was in the same entering cohort as Collier's now-famous student Dambisa Moyo (assuming I would not b…
Writing About Conflict in Africa: Stakes and Strategies
Writing about conflict in Africa is a tricky thing. Publications from non-governmental organizations and human rights campaigners often read as if they were calibrated to maximize public distress, and thus the political or financial support that would keep human rights institutions in business. Many journalistic accounts are stitched together from the rhetorical and analytical remnants of a colonial and sometimes racist common sense. Against this…
Unmasking the State: Making Guinea Modern
When the Republic of Guinea gained independence in 1958, one of the first policies of the new state was a village-to-village eradication of masks and other ritual objects it deemed fetishes. The Demystification Program, as it was called, was so urgent it even preceded the building of a national road system. In Unmasking the State, Mike McGovern attempts to understand why this program was so important to the emerging state and examines the complex…
Turning the Clock Back or Breaking With the Past?: Charismatic Temporality and Elite Politics in Côte d'Ivoire and the United States
The article explores the forms of punctuated time that characterize evangelical discourse in both Côte d'Ivoire and the United States. It compares forms of punctuated time that not only form the basis of End Times theology in both places, but also have served as the basis of important lobbying networks. Although evangelical politics in each place has different roots, both are linked by populist anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Most impor…
Life during wartime: Aspirational Kinship and the Management of Insecurity
This article explores the ways that the institution of the avunculate has been used as an idiom for negotiating forced displacement, dispossession, and insecurity in the forested region where modern-day Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire converge. The essay analyses the ways that the rights and responsibilities that inhere in the MB-ZS relationship are both invoked 'aspirationally' by those with no prior link of kinship and parried …
History is stubborn: Talk about Truth, Justice, and National Reconciliation in the Republic of Guinea
This article uses an analysis of discussions of the November 1970 Portuguese attack on Guinea as a window into issues that continue to be raised concerning the country's first post-independence regime (1958-1984). We analyze ongoing debates among Guineans regarding the legacy of the former president, Sékou Touré, and whether or not there is a need for truth-telling and/or justice for abuses committed under his rule. One strand of this discussion …
Liberty and moral ambivalence: Postsocialist transitions, refugee hosting, and bodily comportment in the Republic of Guinea
Guinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma-speaking farmers' categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites' and contemporary anthropologists' understandin…
Chasing Shadows in the Dunes: Islamist Practice and Counterterrorist Policy in West Africa’s Sahara–Sahel Zone
This chapter lays out the most salient variables in the complex equation, including the significance of changing religious practice, of illicit economic activity, and of local micropolitical realities. While figures like General Wald claimed that the Sahelian terrorist threat was imminent, others have been equally adamant that there have been no jihadi attacks in the SaharaSahel zone. Benjamin Soares has argued that such anxieties reveal much mor…
China–Africa Encounters: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Realities
This review uses multilingual sources to illuminate China–Africa encounters in historical, socialist, and postsocialist contexts. It emphasizes interregional connections over time and uses nuanced ethnographic accounts to complement macrogeopolitical analyses. The article focuses on mutual stereotypes as well as on the negotiation of social and cultural barriers in everyday life. It challenges static, bounded conceptual categories in social scien…
A Socialist Peace: Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country
Book Conversation with Mike McGovern
I Did Not Wash My Hand for Days: The Stuplime Return of Revolutionary Speech in the Republic of Guinea
This article focuses on the reception of revolutionary oratory in what was once known as The People's Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. Sékou Touré, Guinea's first president, captivated the nation with fiery, unscripted speeches lasting four, five, or six hours. Guinean audiences were enthralled by his sublime revolutionary rhetoric. In a 2008 coup, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara declared himself president, attempting to recreate the fervour of Guin…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (7 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (6 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Humanities (5 works) · Law (5 works)